Colour Blindness.
The difference of opinion touching the lights at the railway station
on the night of the fatal accident, continued to create no small
sensation. The jury turned nearly rampant; vowing they'd not attend
the everlastingly adjourned inquest, and wanting every time to return
no verdict at all, say they could not, and have done with it. The
coroner told them that was impossible; though he avowed that he did
not see his way clearly out of it. But for being the responsible
party, he would have willingly pitched the whole affair into the sea.
Over and over again did the public recount the circumstances one with
another. When anybody could get hold of a stranger, hitherto in happy
ignorance, he thought himself in luck, and went gushingly into all the
details. It was a stock-in-trade for the local newspapers; and two of
them entered on a sharp weekly controversy in regard to it. In truth,
the matter, that is the conflict in the evidence, was most remarkable.
That one party should stand to it the lights were red, and that the
other should maintain they were green, was astonishing from the simple
fact that both sides were worthy of credit. In the earlier stage of
the enquiry the coroner had significantly remarked upon the "hard
swearing somewhere:" it seemed more of a mystery than ever on which
side that reproach could attach to. The jury could arrive at no
decision, and thus the inquest had been adjourned time after time, and
now the county was getting tired of it. Cooper, meanwhile suspended
from employment, stood a chance of being reduced to straits if it
lasted much longer. The colonel and Oliver Jupp, who had become
intimate, made rather merry over it when they met, each accusing the
other of having "seen double;" but neither would give way an inch. The
lawyers were confounded, and knew not which side to believe; neither
of the two gentlemen had the slightest personal interest in the
matter; they spoke to further the ends of justice alone, and the one
and the other were alike worthy of credit.
Affairs were in this unsatisfactory state, when a gentleman arrived in
the neighbourhood on a short sojourn, a Dr. Macpherson, LL.D., F.R.S.,
and so on; about seventeen letters in all he could put after his name
if he chose to do it. He was a man great in science, had devoted the
most part of his life to it, no branch came amiss to him; he had
travelled much and was renowned in the world. Amidst other
acquirements he had phrenology at his fingers' ends, being as much at
home in it as we poor unlearned mortals are in reading a newspaper; or
as Mr. Lake was in making himself agreeable to a pretty woman.
They were staying at the "Rose Inn," at Guild, this learned gentleman
and his wife. Professor Macpherson (as he was frequently called) had
come down on some mission connected with geology. He was a very wire
of a man, tall and thin as a lamp-post, exceedingly near-sighted, even
in his silver-rimmed spectacles that he constantly wore; a meek,
gentle, simple-minded man, whose coats and hats were threadbare, a
very child in the ways of the world; as these excessively abstruse
spirits are apt to be.
Mrs. Macpherson was in all respects his opposite: stout in figure,
fine in dress, loud in speech; and keen in the affairs of common life.
Good-hearted enough at the main, but sadly wanting in refinement,
Mrs. Macpherson rarely pleased at first; in short, not to mince the
matter, she was undeniably vulgar. Mrs. Macpherson's education had not
been equal to her merits; her early associations were not of the
silver-fork school. She was a very pretty girl when Caleb Macpherson
(not the great man he was now) married her; habit reconciles us to
most things, and he had discovered no fault in her yet. That she made
him a good wife was certain, and a very capable one.
This was the second visit Professor Macpherson had made to Guild. The
first took place about half a dozen years ago, when he had come on a
question of "pneumatics." He had then become acquainted with the
Reverend Mr. Chester, not himself unlearned in science, and had spent
several hours of three separate days at the rectory. James Chester had
gone now where science probably avails not; Mrs. Chester had quitted
the rectory; and it might have chanced that the acquaintanceship would
never have been renewed but for an accidental meeting.
Mrs. Chester was walking quickly into Guild on an errand when she met
him. He would have passed her; her style of dress was altered--and for
the matter of that he always went (as his wife put it) mooning on, his
head in the skies and looking at nobody. But Mrs. Chester stopped him.
Except that he looked taller and thinner, and his coat a little more
threadbare than of old, and his spectacles staring out straighter up
at the clouds or at the far-off horizon, he was not altered.
"Have you forgotten me, Dr. Macpherson?"
It took the doctor some few minutes to bring himself and his thoughts
down to the level of passing life. Mrs. Chester had to tell him who
she was, and that she was now alone in the world. He took both her
hands in his then, and spoke a few words of genuine sympathy, with the
sorrowful look in his kind eyes, and the tone of true pity coming from
his ever-open heart.
"You will come and call on me, will you not?" she asked, after telling
him where she lived.
"I'll come this evening," he said, "and bring my wife. She's with me
this time."
So Mrs. Chester went home and told Lady Ellis of the promised visit.
That lady, who had been fit to die of weariness since the departure of
Mr. Lake, welcomed it eagerly; on the principle that even an old
professor with seventeen letters beyond his name was of the man
species, and consequently better than nobody.
"I don't know his wife," spoke Mrs. Chester. "She is rather exclusive,
most likely. The wife of a man who has made so much noise in the world
may look down upon us."
Lady Ellis raised her black eyebrows and had a great mind to tell Mrs.
Chester to speak for herself; _she_ was not accustomed to be looked
down upon.
"Does the wife wear a threadbare gown?" she asked, having heard the
description of the professor's coats.
"Very likely," said Mrs. Chester. "She need not, you know; they are
rich."
"Rich, are they?"
"Very rich--now. In early life they had to pinch and screw, and live
without a servant. Dr. Macpherson told us about it."
"He is not above confessing it, then?"
"He!" Mrs. Chester laughed. The simple professor, being "above"
confessing anything of that sort, was a ludicrous idea. She attempted
to describe him as he was.
"My dear Lady Ellis, you can have no notion of his simplicity--his
utter unworldliness. In all that relates to learning and that sort of
thing he is of the very keenest intellect; sharp; but in social life
he is just a child. He would respect a woman who has to wash up her
dishes herself just as much as he would if she kept ten servants to do
it for her. I don't believe he can distinguish any difference."
"Oh!" concluded Lady Ellis, casting a gesture of contempt on the
absent and unconscious professor.
Dr. Macpherson meanwhile, immediately after parting with Mrs. Chester,
put his hand in his pocket for his case of gradients--or whatever the
name might be--and found he had not got it. To go geologizing or
botanizing without it would have been so much waste of time, and he
turned back to the "Rose." It was well for the evening visit that he
did so; but for telling his wife at once while it was fresh in his
head, they had never paid it; for the professor would have forgotten
all about it in half an hour.
Mrs. Macpherson sat fanning herself at the window. She was a stout
woman, comely, red-faced, and jolly; and the fire was large, throwing
out a great heat. Her face and that of her pale thin husband's
presented a very contrast. She wore a bright green silk gown,
garnished with scarlet, and scarlet bows in her rich lace cap.
"I forgot my case, Betsy," said he, on entering.
"'Twouldn't be you, prefessor, if you didn't forget some'at," returned
she, equably. "For a man who has had his head filled with learning,
you be the greatest oaf I know."
Accustomed to these compliments from his wife--meekly receiving them
as his due--Dr. Macpherson took up his case, a thick pocket-book
apparently, the size of a small milestone. He then mentioned his
meeting with Mrs. Chester, and the promised evening visit, which was
received favourably.
"It'll be a godsend," said Mrs. Macpherson. "With you over them
writings of yours, and me a-nodding asleep, the evenings here is
fearful dull. Is the invite for tea and supper?"
Rather a puzzling question. Tea and supper were so little thought of
by the professor, that but for his wife he might never have partaken
of either; and he had to consider for some moments before he could hit
upon any answer.
"I don't think it is, Betsy; I only said I'd call."
"Oh!" returned Mrs. Macpherson, ungraciously, for she liked good
cheer,--"It'll hardly be worth going for. It's not a party, then?"
The professor supposed not. On these matters of social intercourse his
ideas were always misty. He remembered that Mrs. Chester said she had
a Lady Ellis visiting her, and mentioned the fact.
Mrs. Macpherson brightened up. "A _Lady_ Ellis! Are you sure?"
"Yes; I think I'm sure."
"Well now, Caleb, you look here. We must go properly," said Mrs.
Macpherson. "I never was brought into contract with a real live lady
in my life; I haven't never had the chance of saying 'your ladyship,'
except in sport. We'll have out a chaise and pair, and, drive up in
it."
Had she proposed to drive up in a chaise and eight, it would have been
all one to the professor. Conscious of his own deficiency on the score
of sociality (not sociability) and fashion, he had been content this
many a year to leave these things to her.
They arrived at Mrs. Chester's about seven. The chaise and pair
rattled up to the gate; but as it was dark night, the pomp of the
arrival could not be seen from within, and the gilt was taken off the
gingerbread. It happened that Mr. Lake had come over that afternoon--a
rather frequent occurrence--and Mrs. Chester had asked him to stay and
see the strangers. He and Lady Ellis were at their usual game, chess,
and Mrs. Chester was at work close by, when the visitors were
announced by Nanny, the names having been given her by the lady--
"Professor and Mrs. Macpherson."
He came in first--the long, thin, absorbed, self-denying man, in his
threadbare frock-coat. Mrs. Macpherson had left off fighting against
these coats long ago. She ordered him in new ones in vain. As soon as
one came home, he would put it on unconsciously, utterly unable to
distinguish between that and his old one, and go to his work in it:
"his chemical tests, and his proofs, and all that rubbish," as she was
in the habit of saying. Somehow he had a knack of wearing his coats
out incredibly quick, or else the poisons and the fires did it for
him. In a week the new one would be as bad as the rest--shabby and
threadbare. Mrs. Macpherson grew tired at last. "After all, it don't
much matter," was her final conclusion, in pardonable pride. "Good
coat or bad coat, he's Prefessor Macpherson." His scanty dark hair was
brushed smoothly across his head, his brown eyes, shining through his
spectacles, went kindly out in search of Mrs. Chester, who advanced to
receive him.
"My wife, ma'am; Mrs. Macpherson."
Mrs. Macpherson came in--a ship in full sail. She had dressed herself
to go into the presence of a real live lady. _She_ did not travel
without her attire, if he did. The forgetful man was apt to start on a
journey with nothing but what he stood up in; she took travelling
trunks.
An amber satin gown with white brocade flowers on it, white lace
shawl, and small bonnet with nodding bird-of-paradise feather, white
gloves, flaxen hair. Lady Ellis simply stared while the introductions
were gone through and seats were taken. Mrs. Macpherson was free and
unreserved in her conversation with strangers, concealing nothing.
"I was as glad as anything when the prefessor said we were coming here
for a call this evening," she remarked to Mrs. Chester. "Not knowing a
soul in the place, it's naturally dull for me; and we shall have to
stop a week at it, I b'lieve."
"You were not with Dr. Macpherson last time, when I and my late
husband had the pleasure of making his acquaintance," observed Mrs.
Chester, surreptitiously regarding the bird-of-paradise.
"Not I," answered Mrs. Macpherson. "If I went about always with him, I
should have a life of it. What with his geographies, and his botanies,
and his astronomies, and his chemistries, and his social sciences, and
the meetings he has to attend in all parts of the globe, and the
country excursions the societies make in a body, he is not much at
home."
"This is only the second visit he has paid to Guild, I think?"
"That's all. It's geology this time; last time it was--Prefessor,
what's the name of the thing you were down here for last?" broke off
Mrs. Macpherson.
"Pneumatics," he answered, looking lovingly at the child, Fanny
Chester, and a bit of heath she was showing him.
"Eumatics," repeated Mrs. Macpherson. "Not that I can ever understand
what it means. The name's hard enough, let alone the thing itself."
Perhaps the other ladies were in the same blissful ignorance. Mr. Lake
checkmated his adversary, left her to put up the men, and went over to
the professor.
Before tea came in they were out in the garden peering about by
starlight, the remains of an old Roman wall there, that Mr. Lake
happened to mention, keenly exciting the interest of the professor.
Mrs. Macpherson was invited to take off her things, and she threw
the handsome white shawl aside; but having brought no cap, the
bird-of-paradise retained its place. This much might be said for her,
that though addicted to very gay clothes, they were always rich and
good. Mrs. Macpherson would have worn nothing poor or tawdry.
"How fond they are of these miserable bits of things--pieces of an old
wall, strata of earth, wild plants, and such rubbish!" exclaimed Lady
Ellis, with acrimony, inwardly vexed that Mr. Lake should have gone
out a-roving.
"Rubbish it is--your ladyship's right," spoke Mrs. Macpherson.
"Leastways, so it seems to us: but when folks have gifted minds, as
the prefessor has, why perhaps they can see beauties in 'em that's hid
to us others."
Not very complimentary on the whole; but Lady Ellis did not choose to
see it.
"Of course," she said, "your husband is wonderfully clever; he has a
world-wide fame. I heard of him in India."
"Clever on one side, a gander on t'other," said Mrs. Macpherson.
"A gander?"
"Well, you'd not say a goose, I suppose. In his sciences and his
ologies, and his chemicals and his other learnings, why he's uncommon;
there's hardly his equal, the public says. But take him in the useful
things of life, your ladyship, and see what he's good for. Law bless
me!"
"Not for much, I suppose," laughed Mrs. Chester.
"I'd be bound that any child of seven would have more sense. But for
me helping him to it, he'd never have a meal; no, I don't believe, as
I'm an honest woman, that he'd recollect to sit down to one. When he's
away from me, he, as I tell him, goes in for trying to live upon air."
"Do you mean that he really tries to see if he can live upon it?"
"Bless you, no. He must know he couldn't. What I mean is, that he
neglects his food--either forgets it out and out, or does not find
time to sit down to it. And then his clothes! Look at the coat he has
got on now."
Neither of the two ladies having particularly noticed the coat, they
could not make much answering comment. Mrs. Macpherson, fond of
talking, did not wait for any.
"I wonder sometimes what would become of him, and how long he would
wear a coat, but for being looked after. Why, till it dropped off his
back. I have to put every earthly thing ready for him--even to a
pocket-handkercher--and then he can't see them. I used to let him have
a chest of drawers to himself, handkerchers in one, gloves and collars
in another, shirts in a third, and so on. He'd want, let's say, a
necktie. Every individual thing would be taken out of every drawer,
nicked over, thrown on the floor, and he in quite a state of
agitation. Up I'd go, and show it to him. There it would be, staring
him in the face, right under his very eyes."
"And he not seeing it?"
"Never. I soon left off letting him have the control of his own
drawers. I give him one now, and lock up the rest, so that he has to
call me when he wants things. He'll have his spectacles on his nose
and be looking after them; his hand might be touching the ink, and
he'd not see it. Ah! One might wonder why such useless mortals were
born."
"But the professor is so kind and good," observed Mrs. Chester.
"I didn't say he wasn't; I'm not complaining of him," returned the
professor's lady, giving a nod to the bird-of-paradise. "One tells
these things as one would tell stories of a child that's not
responsible for its actions. His brains are too clever, you know, for
ordinary life. Thank ye, ma'am; I like it pretty sweet. There again,
in the small matter of sugar: put the cup half full, or put in none at
all, and it's all one to the prefessor; he'd never notice the
difference."
"I once knew a very clever but very absent man who went to a wedding
in his slippers," said Lady Ellis, leaning back in her armchair and
speaking languidly for the benefit of the lady opposite. "He had
forgotten to put his boots on."
"That's nothing; your ladyship should live for a month with Prefessor
Macpherson. I've quaked in fear before now of seeing him go out
without----worse things than boots."
Mrs. Chester laughed; and what further revelations might have been
made were put an end to by the entrance of the professor himself and
Mr. Lake. They came in talking eagerly, not of the Roman wall, but of
the late fatal railway accident. Mr. Lake was giving him the details,
and especially those relating to the conflicting nature of the
evidence. As soon as Dr. Macpherson had mastered the particulars, he
gave it as his opinion that it must be a case of colour-blindness.
"Of colour-blindness?" echoed Mr. Lake.
"Rely upon it, it is a case of colour-blindness on one side or the
other," continued the professor, who was now showing himself in his
element, the keen man of science, the sensible, sound-judging
reasoner. And so well did he proceed to argue the matter, so aptly and
clearly did he lay the case before them, that Mr. Lake was half
converted; and it was decided that the theory should be followed up.
On the next day the professor was brought into contact with Colonel
West and Oliver Jupp, Mr. Lake having arranged a meeting at his own
house. One or two friends were also present. The subject was entered
upon, and the professor's opinion given. Oliver Jupp believed he might
be right; the colonel was simply astonished at the assertion.
"Not know colours!" cried he. "Not able to tell white from black! Why,
what have our eyes been about all our lives, Mr. Professor? My sight
is keen and clear; I can answer for that; and I've not heard that
there's anything amiss with Mr. Oliver Jupp's."
"It has nothing whatever to do with a keen sight--in the way you are
thinking of," returned Dr. Macpherson. "Nay, it frequently happens
that those who are afflicted with colour-blindness possess a
remarkably good and clear sight. The defect is not in the vision: it
lies in the absence of the organ of colour."
"That's logic," laughed the colonel, who had never heard of such a
theory, and did not believe many others had.
"Look here," said the professor, endeavouring to put the case in an
understandable light "You will allow that men are differently endowed.
One man will have the gift of calculation in an eminent degree; he
will go through a whole ledger swimmingly, while his friend by his
side is labouring at a single column of it: another will possess the
organ of music so largely that he will probably make you a second
Mozart; but his own brother can't tell one tune from another, and
could not learn to play if his very life depended on it: this man will
draw you, untaught, plans and buildings of wondrous and beautiful
design; that one, who has served his stupid apprenticeship to the art,
cannot accomplish a pigsty fit for a civilized pig to live in--and so
I might go on, illustrating examples all. Am I right or wrong?" he
concluded, turning his spectacles full on his attentive listeners.
"Right," they all said, including Colonel West.
"Very well," resumed the professor. "Then I would ask you, gentlemen,
why should colour be an exception? I mean the capability of perceiving
it; the faculty of distinguishing one shade from another?"
There was no immediate answer. The professor went on.
"This brain is totally deficient in the organ of tune; that one is
deficient in some other faculty; a third in something else: why should
not the organ of colour sometimes fail?"
"I thought everybody possessed the organ of colour," observed Mr.
Lake.
"The greater portion of people do possess it; but there are many who
do not."
Colonel West, unconvinced, was rather amused than otherwise. "And you
think, sir, that I and Mr. Oliver Jupp do not possess it," he said,
laughing.
"Pardon me," replied the professor, laughing also, "I never said you
both did not. Had that been the case, you probably would not have been
in opposition to each other. But I have been using my own eyes since
we stood here, and I see which of you has the defect. One of you
possesses the organ of colour (as we call it) in a full degree; the
other does not possess it at all. It lies here."
Dr. Macpherson raised his fingers to his eyebrow, and pointed out a
spot near its middle. The colonel and Oliver Jupp immediately passed
their fingers over their eyebrows, somewhat after the manner of a
curious child. Oliver's eyebrows were prominent; the colonel's
remarkably flat.
"You can testify by experiment whether I am right or wrong, Colonel
West; but I give it as my opinion that you are not able to distinguish
colours."
For some moments the colonel could not find his tongue. "I never heard
of such a thing in all my life!" cried he. "Do you mean to say that I
can see the blue sky" (turning his face upwards), "and not know it's
blue?"
"You know it is blue, and call it blue, because you have heard it so
called all your life," returned the undaunted professor. "But, if half
the sky were blue and half green, you would not be able to say which
was the green half and which the blue."
"That caps everything," retorted the colonel, in high good-humour.
"It's a pity my wife can't hear this; she'd shake hands with you at
once. She has, you must know, a couple of garden parasols: one green,
the other blue. If she sends me indoors for the green, she says I
bring her the blue; and if for the blue, I bring the green. She sets
it down to inattention, and lectures me accordingly."
"You could not have given us a better confirmation that my opinion is
correct," said Professor Macpherson, glancing at the group around.
"Your wife has set this down to inattention, you say, colonel. May I
ask what you have set it down to?"
"I? Not to anything. I never troubled myself to think about it."
The learned gentleman rubbed his hands with satisfaction. "What you
acknowledge is so true to nature, colonel! Those who, like you, are
affected with colour-blindness, can rarely be brought to believe in
their own defect. It is a fact that the greater portion of them _are
not conscious of it_; they really don't know that they cannot
distinguish colours. Some few have perhaps a dim idea that they are
not so quick in that particular as others, but they never think of
questioning the cause. To use your own expression, it does not trouble
them. I understand you maintain that on the night of the accident the
usual light was up--green?"
"Yes," said the colonel. "They exhibit the green light always at
Coombe Dalton station, to enforce caution, on account of the nasty
turning just after passing it. I maintain, as you say, that the
customary green light was shown that night."
"Now I will tell you how to account for that belief;" said the
professor. "It was not so much that you could be sure the _green_
light was up, as that you could not distinguish any difference between
the one you saw, and the one you were accustomed to see. You could not
discern the difference, I say, and therefore you maintained it to be,
as you believed, the same one--the green."
"This seems plausible enough, as you state it," acknowledged Colonel
West, at length. "But pray why should it not be my young friend, Jupp,
who was mistaken--and not I?"
The professor shook his head. "I am quite sure that this
gentleman"--indicating Oliver Jupp--"can never be mistaken in colours
or in their shades, so long as he retains his eyesight to see
anything: he has the organ very largely developed. I am right,
colonel," he added, nodding.
"But what do you say to Cooper, the driver?" returned the colonel. "He
says the light was green: and everybody agrees that he would only
assert what was true."
"What he thought was true," corrected Dr. Macpherson. "There is little
doubt, in my mind, that Cooper's case will turn out to be like your
own--a fact of colour-blindness. He could not distinguish the
difference in the light from the ordinary light, and therefore
believed it to be the same."
"_Both_ of us blind!" exclaimed the colonel, with wide-open eyes.
"That would be too good, Mr. Professor."
"I said only colour-blind," corrected the professor. "There is not the
least doubt that it will turn out to be so."
And he carried the opinions of nearly all present with him. It seemed,
indeed, to be the only feasible solution of the difficulty; and so the
gentlemen said to each other as they dispersed.
"I promised to take you in to see my wife," whispered Mr. Lake to the
man of science, arresting him as he was departing.
Clara was sitting in an easy-chair, a shawl on her shoulders; but she
looked up brightly when the professor entered. If the old feeling of
secure happiness had not come back again, a portion of it had; and she
said to everybody that she was getting well. Mary Jupp was with her.
They had felt half scared at the thought of encountering familiarly so
renowned a man. He turned out to be a very shy and simple one--in
manners, at least; and Miss Jupp, in the revulsion of relieved
feeling, nearly talked him deaf.
"She's a pretty thing, that young man's wife," observed the professor
to Mrs. Macpherson, when he had got back to Guild. "But I'd not like
to take an insurance on her life."
"I never knew you had turned doctor, prefessor."
"It does not require a doctor's eye to see when a blossom's delicate,
Betsy. And those delicate blossoms want a vast deal of care."
The strange opinion avowed by Dr. Macpherson, that the matter which
had been puzzling the world so long, would turn out to be a case of
colour-blindness, excited the wonder of the simple country people. In
these rural districts men are content to live without science, and
cannot well understand it when it is brought home to them. This
opinion, nevertheless, coming from so great an authority, obtained
weight with all, causing some commotion; and it was resolved to test
the sight of the unfortunate driver, Cooper. Colonel West proposed,
half jokingly, half seriously, that his own eyes should also be
tested. It would set the matter at rest in his mind, he said. Mrs.
West devoutly wished she could be present, and see the solution of
what had been hitherto inexplicable. "I'd used to tell that husband of
mine he couldn't see colours," she exclaimed to a select audience,
"but I didn't really suppose it was so; I thought he was careless and
stupid."
On the evening fixed for the test, those concerned in it assembled at
the station of Coombe Dalton. Matthew Cooper came from Katterley in
obedience to the summons sent for him. Colonel West, Mr. Lake, Oliver
Jupp, the coroner, and some of the jury were present: and others also
with whom we have had nothing to do.
The instant that Professor Macpherson cast his eyes on Cooper's face,
he found his anticipation verified. The man laboured under the defect
of colour-blindness, in even a greater degree than Colonel West.
They proceeded to the trial. Lamps of various colours were in
readiness, and the Professor was constituted master of the ceremonies.
He commenced his task by running up a light to the signal-post.
Colonel West and Cooper stood a little forward; the coroner and other
interested people, official and otherwise, behind; the mob behind
them; all at a convenient distance from the lights.
"What light is that?" asked Dr. Macpherson of the two who were on
trial, amidst breathless silence.
A momentary pause. Colonel West and Cooper turned their eyes up to the
raised lamp; the crowd turned theirs.
"It's green," said the colonel.
"It's red," said Cooper.
And there arose a general laugh. For the lamp was blue.
Two lamps were next run up.
"What are they?" was the demand
A dead silence ensued. _Neither Cooper nor the colonel could tell_.
"I ask what are the colours of these two lamps?" repeated the
professor.
"I think they are green and white," hazarded Cooper, at length.
"And I say they are red and blue," cried the colonel.
They were white and blue.
Then the four lamps were exhibited, green, red, white, and blue, and
the mistakes made by both essayists kept the platform in a roar. The
colonel did tell which was the white--but it was probably more of a
guess than a certainty. They could distinguish a "difference," they
said, between two or more colours when exhibited at once, but were
unable to state what that difference was. Both of them were honestly
anxious that the test should be fully carried out, and answered to the
utmost of their ability. Various colours were exhibited, sometimes two
of nearly the same shade: it all came to the same. Long before the
experiment came to an end, the fact had been fully established that
both Colonel West and Matthew Cooper laboured under the defect of
colour-blindness.
"Cooper," said Oliver Jupp, in a good-natured tone, "they must never
make an engine-driver of you again."
"Well, I don't know, sir," returned Cooper, who seemed very
chapfallen, "if it's true what this strange gentleman says, why--I
suppose it is true. But I hope they'll make something else of me; I
know I am keen enough at most things. If a man is deficient in one
line, he may be all the quicker in another."
"Now you have given utterance to a truism, without perhaps knowing
it," interposed the professor, cheerily. "Be assured that where a
defect does exist, it is amply made up for by the largeness of some
other gift. Never fear that an intelligent man, like you, will want
employment, because you are found not suited to the one they placed
you on."
"About the worst they could have given him, as it turns out," remarked
Oliver Jupp, as he stood aside with the professor out of the hearing
of others. "An engine-driver ought, of all men, to be able to
distinguish colours."
"There are some of our engine-drivers who do not, though," was the
reply, as the professor cautiously lowered his voice. "Several of our
worst accidents have occurred from this very fact."
"Do you think so?"
"I know it. It is a more frequent defect than would be thought, this
absence of the organ of colour, but it is one to which little
attention has been hitherto given; a subject that with some excites
ridicule. A company engaging an engine-driver would as soon think of
testing his capacity for eating a good dinner, as that of being able
to distinguish signal lights. Most essentially necessary is it,
though, that drivers, present or future, should undergo the
examination."
"It seems so to me," said Oliver. "And always will seem so--after this
night's experiment."
"And until such examination is made general, I should change the form
of the signal lamps," remarked Dr. Macpherson. "Let the safety signal
be of one uniform shape, and small; let the red, or danger signal, be
of as different a shape as can be made, and large; so different that
it could never fail to catch the eye. For, look you, a head deficient
in the organ of colour will usually have that of form very much
developed: and if a driver could not see the light, he might the form:
and so save his train."
"Quite right," said. Oliver.
"In many of the railway calamities we read of, you find that a
difference of testimony exists as to the colour of the signal
exhibited. One side or the other is supposed to swear falsely; just as
it has been in this case. But for the testimony of Colonel West, the
jury would have returned a verdict against Cooper at once, and
convicted him of falsehood. But rely upon it, the cause, generally
speaking, of these conflicting and painful cases lies not in false
swearing, but in colour-blindness."
So concluded the professor. And so was concluded the long-adjourned
puzzle that had set Coombe Dalton together by the ears. Once more the
inquest was called for the last time; and the jury returned a verdict
of "Accidental death." In the face of the proved defect in Cooper's
capacity for distinguishing the different signals, how could they with
justice punish him? He was sent forth, a free man so far, but
discharged from his employment to begin the world again.
Now, my friendly readers, the above is a bit of honest truth; a
fact from the past. It may be that you will not believe it; may
feel inclined to cavil at it. But search cases out and mark for
yourselves. Blindness to colour is a far more common defect than the
world suspects: it has existed--and does exist--in some of the
railway-engine guards and drivers.